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could make a single line of them But if a concourse 
of atoms can make a world, why not a porch, a temple, a 
house, a city, which are works of less labour and difficulty ? ” 
Many of the witnesses which Paley brought forward to 
establish the fact of design in Nature have been discredited 
through the searching cross-examination of modern science ; 
and some have even been so twisted and turned as to lean 
to the opposite side. But what then ? This impeach- 
ment of testimony prejudices the jury, but cannot blind an 
impartial judge to the principles which underlie the case. 
Much the same has happened in Geology. Many of the facts 
relied upon by earlier geologists have been modified in their 
meaning and their relations, or have been quite set aside by 
the research of later times. Theories have changed with 
every new master of the science, and the now-accepted theory 
of Lyell may yet be modified by the results of deep-sea 
soundings and of explorations in the Sierra Nevada. But no 
one dreams of doubting: that there is in the structure of the 
earth a foundation for a science of Geology. And so we may 
trace there a foundation for a science of Teleology, all the 
more clear because the superficial mechanism of design has 
been swept away. Indeed, the very terms designer, contriver, 
smack of the mechanical, the coarse, the vulgar. Professor 
Tyndall, who certainly has no belief in final cause in the 
theological sense, is already helping us to finer terms for 
Teleology itself ; and these terms occur in examples best fitted 
to illustrate the finer meanings and methods of this science. 
These examples are found in heat and in light. 
There is even more of science than of poetry in the saying 
that coal is “ bottled sunlight.” For what purpose was coal 
produced, but that it should serve for fuel ; should be made 
to give back in practical and beneficial uses the heat it had 
condensed from the sun ? And for whose use intended but 
for man ? Nature in her operations has no service for this 
concentrated extract of ferns and trees. No animal tribes in 
burrowing or foraging had ever sought out the coal, or applied 
it to their wants. But when man had need of other fuel than 
the surface of the earth could furnish him, there lay the beds 
of coal ready to his hand. Can wo resist the conviction that 
coal was provided in anticipation of the coming of man — 
stored, so to speak, in the cellar of his future abode ? If 
there were, indeed, such a purpose in the formation of coal, 
the relation between the purpose and the result is the more 
impressive because it was so long latent, and required ages 
for its development. Not fact and form alone, but idea and 
intent as well, are in process of development. The plan in 
evolution is also the evolution of a plan. Prof. Tyndall has 
